2 April 2008

The William Blake Archive is pleased to announce
 the publication of an electronic edition of Blake’s illustrations to John Milton’s Paradise Lost. This group of twelve water colors was acquired, and probably commissioned, by Thomas Butts in 1808. These designs, now dispersed amongst four institutions, are presented in our Preview mode, one that provides all the features of the Archive except Image Search and Inote (our image annotation program).

Blake had produced twelve Paradise Lost water colors for the Rev. Joseph Thomas in 1807. Eleven of the designs in the Butts set, presented here, are variants of those in the Thomas set, but the fourth design of 1807, “Satan Spying on Adam and Eve and Raphael’s Descent into Paradise,” is replaced with a different subject, “Adam and Eve Asleep,” which comes fifth in the sequence. The Butts group, sometimes called the “large set” because of the larger format, is more highly finished and monumental than the Thomas designs, with stronger interior modeling on the figures and more facial details. The figures are larger in relation to the total pictorial space.

Here, as usual in his work as an illustrator of other poets’ works, Blake paid close attention to the text, but this disciplined approach did not preclude his own interpretations. For example, Blake’s choice of subjects places greater emphasis on Christ’s role in Milton’s epic than most series of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century illustrations of Paradise Lost.

With this publication, the Archive contains seven of Blake’s nine series of water colors illustrating Milton’s poetry. It is our intention to publish in the near future the remaining two series: the Linnell set of illustrations to Paradise Lost and the Butts set of designs for "On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity."

As always, the William Blake Archive is a free site, imposing no access restrictions and charging no subscription fees. The site is made possible by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the continuing support of the Library of Congress, and the cooperation of the international array of libraries and museums that have generously given us permission to reproduce works from their collections in the Archive.

Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi, editors
Ashley Reed, project manager, William Shaw, technical editor
The William Blake Archive